yeah?

i haven't seen anything about this on my dashboard, so i wanted to share. ICE gestapo killed another human being on tuesday. he leaves behind three sons and his wife, who he has spent the last 35 years building a life with

there is a gofundme supported by the league of united latin american citizens set up to help with funeral costs, legal fees, and supporting his family moving forward.

I think that the US transfemme desire to disown drag/ballroom is a symptom of both white culture’s destruction of ancestral ties and the importance of cultural continuity, and of the predominantly white ignorance of it as a gentrified Black art form similar to how whites treat other Black art. They want a destruction of it because they see the effects and results of the gentrified version and assume that’s all there is/was.

In particular it’s frustrating because while some drag queens are cis, a lot are trans women, non-binary, or otherwise transmisogynized and drag/ballroom and the tipping culture associated with it existed in part because the transmisogynized are so fucking unemployable and it provided/s a method beyond mutual aid for the redistribution of money, through the labor of performance.

In relation to trans women, I view drag queens as a pathway to transness similar to crossdressers, femboys, (unfortunately) sissies, and similar - where although the perception of them currently may cause harm to the perception of trans women at large due to the ways they compromise with predominantly white cishetero society to allow transfemmes to explore their gender, they are, in fact, still functionally people within the spectrum of transfemininity even if they haven’t fully accepted their gender expansiveness for themselves. Harm they cause to the perception of transfemmes does not lessen them from that societal assignment, any less than we can say Caitlyn Jenner, Blair White, or Kelly Cadigan are less trans women because of the harm they’ve done to the perception of trans women. They are all, in effect, varying levels of transmisogynized whether they realize it or not.

When I was in DC I knew a lot of drag kings/queens and literally 95% of them are trans and either came to drag/ballroom as a way to explore their gender through art and/or make money bc poor, or started it and it was a gateway to unlocking their gender. Not counting the cis performers elevated by stuff like RuPaul, who is explicitly transphobic, I think I can count on my hands how many cis performers I’ve met. Hell, even with RuPaul shit a number of drag artists who have been on his shows later come out as trans (such as Bosco, who I literally grew up with), in part because they suppressed their transness publicly to maintain their career until they reached a point the blowback of coming out wound impact them less. Pulling a F1NNSTER to keep cash flowing for survival, if you will.

Iunno like. The earliest Balls we have records of were literally 1880-90s, predominantly Black (the oldest drag/ballroom performer we have records of was a Black trans woman from DC), and was one of the only safe places for trans people to exist as themselves. So I find the idea of writing it off due to a much more recent gentrification and commercialization of it as ignorant as how people often treat other demonizes or commercialized Black art.

“I just don’t like the spectacle it makes of transness and harm it causes-“

Baby all Blackness is spectacle to crackers and An Amount of modern drag is white people doing minstrelsy of all Black women - not in the sense of gender at all but in the sense of race.

Like. A lot of Black culture in the US specifically is Big and Loud *because* of the repression of it we’ve faced and the force towards respectability politics, which has echoed to queer culture because queer culture in the US is made vast majority from Black culture. Our existence is a spectacle so why not make a show out of why they hate us and try to erase us so that they can’t get rid of even more.

Hating “the spectacle” of an actual performance art form is solidly rooted in white supremacy and white cultural notions of propriety/respectability. Many aspects of “spectacle” seen in drag are directly taken from Ballroom or adapted from it/vogueing.

In summary: traditions are meant to change with situational, cultural, and environmental need but still be sustained as part of a culture. Gentrification is a poison to this that makes it harder for those the culture belongs to to practice it as it should. White ancestral shame is a poison that makes them think they should nuke everything historic/cultural that makes them uncomfortable regardless of whether it’s theirs or whether it’s something they stole and gentrified. Also yeag like,,, it’s a job/gig income predominantly for societal “undesirables” to make money when they’re under/unemployed due to marginalization. And it’s also been gentrified to *gestures at RuPaul, et al.*

No matter what you think about drag or ballroom, poor predominantly racialized trans folks still gon be doing it because it is part of our culture no matter what tv shows and big names and people who have only seen those do to it, and it’s always going to be seen as one of the “disreputable” pathways to transness that makes other trans people look down on them because of the complicated ties to transmisogyny, because until someone publicly says the words “Im also a trans woman”, WE also view them as a personification of what we fear the world sees us as—a man in a dress—rather than an egg finding their way to gender in a way we deem unacceptable because it doesn’t align with how we think it “should” be done.

And I think that’s on us honestly, not on them. If we say it can take as long or as quickly and as easily or messily for someone to sort out their gender as needed, this also has to be extended to the transmisogynized we view as “disreputable” regardless of if/when they reach a conclusion we deem acceptable or whether they die in the shell, never able to remove their masks fully.

Like, as an example, I *hate* sissies because of the racism endemic to sissy culture, but I still recognize they’re transmisogynized regardless of the harm they do or the disgust I feel towards them.

I also had someone comment on it as a facet of US cultural imperialism, of which I do want to note - drag/ballroom based on Black origins was spreading outside the US back in the 1800s/early 1900s too, there’s photos from other countries of balls explicitly influenced by Black Balls mainly started by Black folks in said countries, an example being early 1900s photos from France of both transmasculine and transfeminine Black people. While modern gentrified drag is 100% exported as part of US cultural imperialism, its original spreads outside of the US were via Black diaspora in-culture. I honestly couldn’t tell you definitively where it stuck and where it didn’t from that original wave, but it’s important to know it existed that way.

Girl do you have any idea how many white transfemmes got their starts as trans women through sissy kink and some *still* claim it even after years of hormones and multiple surgeries, not just for SW reasons either. Shit, a couple of the most prominent white dolls in DC still actively identify as sissies.

Is it uncomfy as hell to know this along with the horrific racism levels innate to sissy shit? Yup! Do a significant amount of trans women still start out as sissies? Sure do!

I need yall to sit and understand im talking about the *material realities* of how the transmisogynized are treated by society, not whether it makes us comfortable or happy to fucking know it. Your personal disgust or uncomfortability with being even peripherally associated with them because of them coming across their gender in a “disreputable” way does not change whether they are transmisogynized or not.

“They can take it off while we can’t! They’re all just men!” Ok so are boymoders not transmisogynized? Are those fully in the closet not transmisogynized? Are the very societal forces that drive them to access any hint of transfemininity they can through any method they can—whether it’s playing a girl in a video game, drag, sissification, crossdressing, or becoming a femboy—not intrinsic proof of their transmisigynization BECAUSE they feel they cannot directly access that transfemininity? Because I thought we had arrived at the conclusion that transmisogynization occurs even before someone comes fully and openly out as some type of transfemme, before they say the words “I am a trans woman”, when or *if* they ever publicly do.

We spend AGES looking at people, dead or alive, and going “oh, that’s a transfemme who hasn’t gotten/didn’t get to come out as one” - We are extremely hypocritical in how we allow or disallow transmisogynized people access to transfemininity based on how we feel they reflect on us as a community. Shit, Kurt Kobain was “just” a crossdresser—and a lot of the girls HATE interacting with crossies personally—but half of the dolls on this site (rightly) claim her as a transfemme who didn’t get to come out before she died. She’s provided that access because she makes us “look good”, “despite” being a crossdresser. In this way, we treat respectability as the bar by which we determine whether we let the “disreputable” transmisogynized be recognized for what they are or not.

Do they experience the full effects of transmisogynization full time? Of course not. But transmisogynization is a spectrum, as we’ve discussed in whether eggs/closeted girls are transmisogynized prior to coming out. The “disreputable” transmisogynized often (though not always) exist in life situations where they cannot safely access transfemininity through other methods or full time, so they do not suffer the same levels of constant transmisogyny as trans women do, but to pretend they aren’t transmisogynized at all flies directly in the face of our own theories and is supported solely by politics of disgust.

This was a historic Black cemetery in Florida and people vandalized and destroyed the graves. That level of hatred does not come from nowhere.

So if conversations about racism, accountability, and protecting spaces from people who have shown they are racist or harmful make you uncomfortable, this probably is not the page for you, and that is fine.

Because every single day there is another story. A racist influencer hurting somebody. A Black child being called slurs. A Black family targeted. A graveyard destroyed. Every day Black people are reminded that simply existing can make us a target.

We will still laugh, joke, create, and enjoy ourselves. But when it is time to speak seriously about what is happening to us, we are going to do that too. And if that feels “too political” or “too much” for you, then this space probably is not meant for you.

A transmasc drag queen made a call-out post about how a newly-out local trans woman is a sexual predator. (The sexual offence was that, 6 years ago, before she came out, she was at a drag show with the drag queen (who was her friend at the time) and joked that the drag queen's makeup looked a bit like semen.) The trans woman spiralled, got drunk, got hit by a car, and is currently in hospital.

A newly-out trans woman and a trans man met at a local trans support group. They decided to meet up again at a local pub. She apparently asked questions about his transition that he considered invasive, and in a voice that was too loud and risked outing him to other people in the venue. She now faces being banned from the support group.

The only trans woman who volunteers to run that support group is being kicked off the team by the trans man who is in charge of it. The reason is that she once told the guy in charge to "stop talking" when he was giving her several instructions at once, and also that a different transmasc volunteer has said they find her "creepy" and don't want to be alone with her.

All three trans women are autistic, isolated, and don't have much practice with irl socialising. Maybe they're a little bit loud, maybe a little bit abrasive, maybe they misjudge the appropriateness of sexual comment to a friend at a drag show, maybe they're too keen to make a new friend that they get excitable and speak too loud and ask too many questions, maybe they get overstimulated by being told too many instructions and need you to stop for a second to give them space.

Maybe their behaviour that you consider weird and unsettling is actually a trauma response to a childhood and adolescence of isolation and bullying.

And you know what the funny thing is? I have been sexually harassed at a drag show by the drag queen in (1), who was performing and making sexual jokes about various people in the audience. I have been in a public place with the trans man in (2) while he asked me loud invasive questions about my HRT regimen and about child abuse I suffered. And I have been misgendered and deadnamed repeatedly by the trans man in (3).

And do you know what I did about any of these things? Nothing, beyond saying "Hey, I'd appreciate if you don't do that next time 👍 No hard feelings 🙂". Because, not only am I aware that people make mistakes, and I consider trans men and transmascs a vulnerable demographic and it would be a totally unjust overreaction from me to attempt to socially isolate them for these offences.

But also, I don't have the social power to do anything about these things anyway, even if I wanted to. My normal response to experiencing even serious abuse at a queer event is to simply stop attending it, isolating myself, and perhaps telling a few close friends about it. Because I already know that my complaints will not be taken seriously.

i'm in Ireland and the search for that bastards name is still blocked and hidden... the legnths the british go to defend and protect their instruments of colonialism and violence is beyond belief. no justice for the victims and yet every measure taken to protect David James Cleary and his fellow murderers.

This has been happening all month with little to no international media attention. Here are a few organizations you can check out for resources or to support:

ActionAid India

SEEDS India

GlobalGiving

So my actual TEXTBOOK admitted that it was biased and teaching these disorders based on opinion and not up to date research. And, as described above, the section on ODD was basically just, “these are bad kids. We will not look into why or how or what comorbidities exist and we will also not be exploring the possibility of ODD really being a manifestation of trauma/undiagnosed adhd/autism/pathological demand avoidance/persistent drive for autonomy. We will however be mostly focusing on how annoying these kids are to their parents and teachers ✨️”

It’s fucking crazy. “Yeah we know lots of people with autism struggle to follow demands. They may either ignore/not register demands or have meltdowns when demands are placed. They may engage in physical aggression, verbal aggression, and property desctruction when directed to complete tasks or be exposed to uncomfortable sensory input. They may need to know the why behind demands and consequently argue with authority figures. They may be easily upset by sensory input or social interactions and have emotional outbursts when pushed beyond their limits. Some children with autism seek attention and may engage in maladaptive behaviors to elicit the attention of peers and caregivers if positive attention is not given freely/if they are ignored when behaving appropriately. All of these are symptoms of their underlying neurological differences and should be met with compassion and understanding. They are not bad children. Their brains process information differently and therefore they have executive functioning, sensory processing, and emotional regulation challenges that cause these behaviors.

How would you even measure that?

Things adults wrongly identify as arguing:

Asking for clarification

Asking any kind of question

defending yourself

answering a question teh adult has just asked you

breathing

Existing

Oh, also:

Race and the Mental Representation of Individuals Diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder: Implications for Diagnosis

Pathologizes problems with authority to dismiss them as irrational.

1. Genuinly assuming worse of men, in which case it kinda feels like you are missing the point of like feminism in general? Because as far as i can parse the general idea is that men and women are equal no? You are assuming things of people based on gender, and are proud of it. In general you should meet people before assuming things about them. Every day im surprised at how rare it is for people to want equality. (Also solid chance you are weird about trans women in general because you either believe its nature or nurture, if its nurture trans women are brought up as men unfortunately, if its nature then a lot of people would assume trans women also have that nature)

First off, I kinda fucked saying anything about the "point" of feminism as its varied as shit and while some people do it for equality other do it for, i guess, having women above men? Kinda fucked but okay. (Because removing the patriarchy is removing the "men get authority" bs, which is an equality thing and if you believe in equality then i point to 2)

Second off, believing in equality may be wrong to you, but i wouldn't call it nonsense either way.

Third off, feminism is varied as shit, you also can't say anything about its "point"

Fourth off, what did the nebulous "men" do that deserves bad? Worse, what did every individual man do that deserves to suffer? In what world is it okay to want to condemn half of the world to a worse life than the other half because of something they were born as? What makes you better than misogynists? Than racists? Than homophobes? Than transphobes? The target? If you believe that then you should understand the way people pick their targets in these things is based on 3 things, upbringing, characteristics of who hurt them in the past, and most importantly, luck. Whatever you heard about men that makes them deserve worse, someone else heard about women. Someone else heard about poc. Someone else heard about gay people. Someone else heard about trans people. Variations of what you heard, but it all falls down to excuses for why you want someone to be above.

Sincerely, someone living life, who doesn't want people hurt for how they were born.

@creatingblackcharacters is hosting another CBC Book Club, starting on 06/14/2026. We'll be reading "Medical Apartheid - The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present." I would recommend it.

I'm putting my previous thoughts on this thread below: